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East Asia vs. West Asia, on and Off the Field

ULSAN, SOUTH KOREA — A casual observer might not think there was much that connected Ulsan in South Korea and Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, two industrial cities at the opposite ends of Asia, but there are ships, oil and, on Saturday at least, soccer.

Stretching over three kilometers, or two miles, along the southeastern coast of Korea, Hyundai Heavy Industries’ shipyards here are the biggest in the world and produce container vessels that regularly sail into the Red Sea port. The company does more than build ships. It also owns a professional soccer team, Ulsan Hyundai Horangi, and the K-league club will host Al Ahli of Jeddah in the final of the 2012 Asian Champions League on Saturday.

A victory by Ulsan would be the 10th Asian title for a South Korean club. Japanese and South Korean clubs have won the title five times since 2006, helping reinforce the perception that the two East Asian nations, with their recent successes at World Cups, Asian Cups and the Olympics, have moved ahead of other traditional powers in Asia, like Saudi Arabia and Iran.

If soccer and business can bring people from the two distant cities together, the same east-west harmony is not always on display when it comes to managing the business of soccer in Asia. The politics of the 47 members of the Asian Football Confederation are not for the faint of heart.

In October, a simple game report on the A.F.C.’s official homepage revealed tensions that are rarely far from the surface; the story referred to the United Arab Emirates’ national team with the derogatory term “The Sand Monkeys.”

The secretary general of the Emirati Football Association, Yousuf Abdulla, said the slur had revealed “the racist acts of some of the A.F.C. officials from the eastern part of the continent toward the countries from the western region.” The F.A. demanded an apology and threatened to withdraw from the body if it did not receive one. It soon did, with the A.F.C. blaming the mistake on a writer who had gotten the term from an online encyclopedia.

“In such a huge confederation, I believe such differences are inevitable,” said Michelle Chai, a former assistant general secretary at the A.F.C., now the director of competitions and club licensing in the U.A.E. Pro League. “After all, soccer is a reflection of the real world. I would say that there are differences in terms of culture, mentality and practices between the regions that could lead to one not understanding the other.”

Fans from East Asia have been known to refer to the A.F.C. as the Arabian Football Confederation because of the perceived imbalance of power in favor of the west, despite the greater success that teams from the east routinely enjoy on the field.

That came to a head in January 2011 when Chung Mong-joon, the biggest shareholder in Hyundai Heavy Industries, lost his seat on FIFA’s 24-member executive committee and his position as FIFA vice president to Prince Ali Bin Al-Hussein of Jordan.

With Japan’s representative on the influential committee retiring because of age at the same time, some pundits in Tokyo and Seoul have lamented a perceived weakening of East Asian influence. Hussein, also president of the Jordan Football Association, insists that he has been working to bring Asia together since taking on his FIFA post.

Photo

Lee Keun-ho, left, of Ulsan Hyundai Horangi, after he scored in the Asian Champions League quarterfinals. The South Korean club will play Al Ahli, a Saudi team, for the title.Credit
Reuters

“I don’t think there is any real tension,” Hussein said. “I am not representative of the west, but representative of the whole of Asia. For example, I have worked well with the Japan F.A. since January 2011.”

As Ulsan and Al Ahli can perhaps demonstrate, the Asian Champions League, an annual tournament operated along the lines of the European tournament, is a regular opportunity for all corners of the continent to engage with each other.

“I believe the Asian Champions League has brought and can continue to bring Asia together,” Chai said. “It is important for Asian soccer that clubs from the East and West play with each other — different styles, different experiences will ultimately only enrich our national soccer.”

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Hussein would like to see the tournament become more inclusive, as strict entry criteria mean that the majority of the 47 national associations in the A.F.C. are barred from guaranteed entry.

“At the moment, it looks great on paper, but only 11 countries qualify for participation, which is ridiculous. The idea was that the bar is set so high and all have to achieve those goals, but in reality it takes away those clubs that can win and takes away their incentive. You have an elite, and the rest can’t get there.”

Asian unity in soccer is also not helped by the fact that the A.F.C. does not have a permanent president.

Mohamed Bin Hammam was suspended from that role in May 2011 after a FIFA Ethics Committee found the Qatari guilty of buying votes in the presidential race for soccer’s world governing body. (Sepp Blatter, the incumbent, won re-election.)

The lifetime ban from soccer imposed by the committee was overturned in July by the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Switzerland, but bin Hammam, who has repeatedly proclaimed his innocence, remains provisionally suspended by both FIFA and the A.F.C., pending investigations into allegations of financial irregularities during his nine-year tenure as Asian soccer’s senior official. Whatever the outcome, it is unlikely that bin Hammam will ever return to the post.

While Zhang Jilong of China is the acting president, an East Asian has held the post on a permanent basis since 1958. Jilong’s main rivals are likely to come from the west, with the presidents of the national associations of the Emirates, Yousuf Al Serkal (regarded as an ally of bin Hammam’s), and of Bahrain, Sheik Salman Bin Ibrahim Al-Khalifa, expected to run.

“I won’t say that there isn’t some politics going on,” Hussein said. “There are people with different opinions and some of those are looking to the idea of running themselves.”

Chai said she believed that the current situation at the A.F.C. was not a result of the opposite ends of Asia vying for power. She did say, however, that “there are now people who are trying to take advantage of the situation and further aggravate the tensions by making this an east vs. west situation.”

That will indisputably be the case Saturday at Ulsan World Cup Stadium, with the winner becoming champion of Asia; off the field, though, the future is much less clear.